Impact of Brexit already being felt

Research carried out by the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) has shown that one third of UK construction firms are already feeling the effects of Brexit and most have taken no action to deal with it.

The research which questioned 400 firms shows that the number of migrant workers in unskilled general roles has doubled to 40%, with Romanians showing the largest increase. The number of firms who say that Brexit is impacting their business has increased by 9%, while half of employers say that recruitment is likely to become more difficult.

Steve Radley from CITB has stated that with Brexit approaching construction employers are expecting that the recruitment of skilled workers will get harder. Yet few are making any changes to the way they work to take this into account, with most focusing on retaining the employees they already have. He points out that 158,000 construction jobs are expected to be created over the next 3 years, so the industry needs to know how it will deliver its part of the building strategy.

This news follows reports from the Federation of Master Builders that indicated that small and medium-sized construction firms were facing huge shortfalls in workers -seriously impacting on government plans to build hundreds of thousands of homes each year. Their quarterly report on the state of the industry showed that demand for skilled workers is far outstripping supply - pushing up wages.

This is further compounded by the increase in material costs for building companies.